Khalid Benhamou
Born in Brussels in 1967 Khalid Benhamou grew up in Morocco and completed his education in the USA where he received an engineering degree from the California Polytechnic State University in 1992. After returning to Morocco Khalid Benhamou started his career in agricultural operations which rapidly led to wind power developments. Mr. Benhamou supported early on the vision of large integrated wind energy developments with European industry leaders, multilateral institutions, and bilateral governmental support to build the 5000 MW HVDC Sahara Wind Energy Development Project to supply Euro-Mediterranean electricity markets. Presented in 2002 at the European parliament, in 2003 at WWEC in Cape Town SA, and in most specialized industry related events ever since, this large wind energy and HVDC transmission project with a phased implementation and a threshold capacity of 500 MW, gained momentum particularly with the advent Mediterranean Solar Plan whose protagonists it helped inspire. As a developer and founder of Sahara Wind Inc, Khalid Benhamou installed Morocco’s first hybrid wind/diesel system in the Sahara desert in 1994. Involved in regional capacity building activities in both Morocco and Mauritania with the regions industries, academia and research centers where the issues of wind energy integration in weak grids remains critical, local industrial synergies quickly revealed themselves as essential components of the large Sahara Wind Project for which a comprehensive multi-stakeholder framework has been established.
